"Passing Stranger"

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A lesson in what to show prospective employers

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Passing Stranger

Walter Lassally Film-maker

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So my second film was a British film. It was a second feature, and it was called The Passing Stranger. And it starred Diane Cilento, whom I fell in love with instantly, but who didn't want to know anything about me. And it was all shot in a tiny little studio in... in West London, called The Viking Studios, which... which was still in existence some years recently. I think it's... it's gone now, but it lasted quite a while. And the... it was a very small studio. So the sets were built right up to the wall more or less. There were... there used to be, typically, a space of like 3ft between the back of the set and the studio wall. So it was a bit... it was a bit tight, but it was a very good lesson. And it was my first really... comprehensive lesson in studio lighting, which was very... which was very good experience indeed. And looking back on it, it's... it's quite well done. It's not bad at all. But it was a... it was a second feature and it was shot in... but even as a second feature we had quite a... I can't remember how many days we had, but it was quite extensive; much more than you would... you would get nowadays. So that was... that was a... that was a good experience working on... on that film.

Born in Germany, cinematographer Walter Lassally (1926-2017) was best known for his Oscar-winning work on 'Zorba the Greek'. He was greatly respected in the film industry for his ability to take the best of his work in one area and apply it to another, from mainstream to international art films to documentary. He was associated with the Free Cinema movement in the 1950s, and the British New Wave in the early 1960s. In 1987 he published his autobiography called 'Itinerant Cameraman'.

Title: "Passing Stranger"

Listeners: Peter Bowen

Peter Bowen is a Canadian who came to Europe to study and never got round to heading back home. He did his undergraduate work at Carleton University (in Biology) in Ottawa, and then did graduate work at the University of Western Ontario (in Zoology). After completing his doctorate at Oxford (in the Department of Zoology), followed with a year of postdoc at the University of London, he moved to the University's newly-established Audio-Visual Centre (under the direction of Michael Clarke) where he spent four years in production (of primarily science programs) and began to teach film. In 1974 Bowden became Director of the new Audio-Visual Centre at the University of Warwick, which was then in the process of introducing film studies into the curriculum and where his interest in the academic study of film was promoted and encouraged by scholars such as Victor Perkins, Robin Wood, and Richard Dyer. In 1983, his partner and he moved to Greece, and the following year he began to teach for the University of Maryland (European Division), for which he has taught (and continues to teach) biology and film courses in Crete, Bosnia, and the Middle East.

Tags: sets, film, feature, studio, lighting, lesson

Duration: 1 minute, 24 seconds

Date story recorded: June 2004

Date story went live: 24 January 2008